Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2)

Key words: Volunteer, Mentoring, Consulting, Professional Development

SV2 is a nonprofit learning community of everyday givers committed to accelerating equity through grantmaking and impact investing for a thriving Bay Area and world. SV2 activates local changemakers who want to connect, learn, and practice values-aligned giving and investing in community. Our mission is to unleash the resources and talents of the Bay Area community to achieve meaningful social impact.

We engage Donor Partners directly in providing unrestricted grant funding to Bay Area nonprofits and making founder-friendly investments in early-stage social enterprises and impact funds making a global impact. Since 1998, SV2 has invested in over 200 social ventures.

Our Donor Partners learn best practices through this collective funding work and also in immersive learning workshops and by “getting proximate” with local community leaders and organizations.

• Grantmaking: We take a trust-based philanthropy approach, supporting mission-driven nonprofits in the Bay Area with unrestricted multi-year grants and Beyond the Dollars support. We focus on funding organizations with diverse teams representative of the communities they serve.

• Impact Investing: We make investments in early stage companies with social or environmental impact at the core of their business model. We are especially focused on allocating capital to founders from underrepresented backgrounds.

• Immersive Learning: We offer week-long immersive learning trips in California and the U.S. South, learning workshops on topics like nonprofit financial review, board service, and due diligence training, and peer cohorts focused on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Some distinctives of our work:

• We’re focused on local givers committing human, financial, and social capital for local impact

• We engage our donors in innovative best practices through “learning by doing” opportunities

• We increase the pool of active givers who understand community-driven solutions

• A commitment to equity, power-sharing, and mindfulness underpins our work 

SV2 defines success in two ways: our Donor Partners become more equitable, effective, and generous givers as a result of our work, and our Grantee and Investee Partners become more able to grow their impact as a result of our unrestricted funding and capacity-building Beyond-the-Dollars support.

Additional Resources:

• Impact Report 

• Strategic Plan

• Donor Partner Flyer

• Donor Partner Contribution Form. 

In addition, SV2's equity-centered work was recently featured in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, in a Fireside Chat between BoardSource CEO Monika Kalra Varma and David Onek, and in a BoardSource blog